Most Popular Reviews

The Inbetweeners

They’re back! However, it seems they’re even more cringe-worthy than ever before. The taster video trailer for the follow up to the best British comedy in recent history undeniably reminds one of all things viewers loved about them previously. To sum it all up – questionable catchphrases and teenage jokes. This particular follow up looks to pit the boys on a gap year-style vacation in Sydney, Australia. However, it looks like they’re not really taking in the indigenous culture around them!

Ender’s Game

In the future, an aggressive alien race (known as the Formics) have attacked our planet. Were it not for the renowned actions of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), just about all might have been destroyed. In readiness for a future assault, the well-regarded Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) is training the finest youngsters on Earth in an effort to discover a potential future Mazer. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a timid, yet tactically outstanding young man is removed from his school to enlist with the elite. Reaching Battle School, Ender efficiently masters increasingly complicated war games, distinguishing himself and earning admiration amongst his classmates. Ender is quickly installed by Graff to be Earth’s future salvation, leading to his advancement to Command School. Upon arriving, he is taught by Mazer himself, and guides his fellow troops into an epic fight which will decide the future of the planet as well as humanity itself. Based on the best-selling and highly-rated book of the same name, ENDER’S GAME is an impressive journey that has enlisted the acting skills of some of the best-known celebrities, Ben Kingsley and Harrison Ford.

Bad Neighbours

The 1981 washout Neighbors infamously reversed the main personalities of its leading characters, launching outrageous John Belushi as an unassuming city resident furious as a result of fellow neighbour Dan Aykroyd’s crazy way of living. Nicholas Stoller’s more recent take on the storyline replicates this script, with Seth Rogen as the docile neighbour going up against Zac Efron’s wild party animal persona. Even though the outcomes are nothing like as catastrophic as Belushi’s take, the movie continues to suffer from a shortage of control required to ensure it is anything but a war of neighbours. We are stuck with a feeling that the cameras simply kept on rolling as the proficient lead actors entertained themselves in an increasingly boisterous manner. A frequent comedic joke around ripped off airbags could be more amusing if every one of its punchlines had not previously been revealed in the movie trailer.

Make: AVR Programming

Atmel’s AVR microcontrollers are the microprocessors that are found in the ever-more popular Arduino, and the microprocessor of choice for many a hobbyist and maker. This book delves deeply into the programming the microprocessor itself allowing one to use features that are otherwise unavailable in the more superficial Arduino ecosystem. You will learn how to program AVR microprocessors directly, interface with devices connected via USB, I2C, or SPI, and learn how to access the hidden powers of the microcontroller. This is cleverly integrated with building projects such as making a Radio or a Light-Sensor Alarm. Essential reading for any AVR enthusiast or anyone who wants to understand the Arduino environment in greater depth.

The LED Grow Book

Heated debate is not uncommon within the growing community when it comes to LED grow lights. Some people are clear advocates while others turn away in disgust preferring the more traditional grow lighting systems that have shown their worth for years. Information on the internet is conflicted and it seems like everyone has a different opinion on whether the technology has finally caught up with the proven methods. Surprisingly, given the level of discussion surrounding them, it is hard to find many books which bring together the current state of LED grow light technology and how to go about using them. Fortunately, some websites have tried to sift through this endless universe of information (for example, LEDgrowlightsHQ.co.uk is one such site that has clearly been well researched) but unless you are willing to spend endless amounts of time looking through countless websites to get lots of the same information then this is a well-written book that summarises just about everything you want to know about LED grow lights. Highly recommended, especially for someone who is just starting their journey into the confusing world of grow lights!

MAKERS: The New Industrial Revolution

This book by Chris Anderson, editor for Wired magazine and best-selling author of the “The Long Tail” looks at the new industrial revolution that is in our midst where an army of makers and tinkerers are using open-source design in all fields of science to bring innovation to the home. We are in an age of do-it-yourselfers who are pushing the limits of product design and creation, and are about to change…well… pretty much everything. This book looks at this revolution in detail and and rightly concludes that it will drive the next industrial chapter in the global economy, especially as the new technologies of 3D prototyping lets anyone with an idea create ‘the next big thing’.

Command And Control

Since the end of the cold war, most of our worries about nuclear Armageddon have involved accidents at nuclear civilian facilities, take Fukishima. But have we been missing something? Eric Schlosser seems to think so. Author of the bestseller ‘Fast Food Nation’, he has once again provided us with revelations from worlds we don’t normally see or think about. And some of it is pretty frightening. His discovery that America came close to nuclear disaster in a military accident a year before the Cuban missile crisis has been shocking to say the least. In 1961 a B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons flying over North Carolina went out of control. As the plane went into a tailspin, the centrifugal forces bypassed all the safety mechanisms to prevent the bombs from exploding save one simple electrical switch. If this switch had activated, as could have easily happened from an electrical short, then most of Washington, Philadelphia and New York would not be here today. This and other accounts of nuclear near-misses have been competently assembled from files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and elaborated upon through detailed interviews with some of the servicemen involved. Not a book to read if you are of a nervous disposition!

AppleScript: The Definitive Guide

With the popularity of the Apple Macintosh computer rising, many Mac users are discovering the hidden world of AppleScript, Apple’s scripting language for MacOS X. This book has been written for the newest Applescript version introduced with MacOS Tiger and still going strong in the later versions of the OS. It is the latest edition of the popular ‘AppleScript: The Definitive Guide’, which is essential reading for anyone who wants to make their Mac work for them literally while they are sleeping. This edition has been fully overhauled, delving deeper into AppleScript version 1.10, even including an understanding of the inner workings of the application itself. It provides insights into using Applescript in a variety of contexts such as in everyday automation tasks, and integration with the Mac programming language, Cocoa, as well as with other programming languages such as Javascript and Perl. Reviewed and approved by Apple, this manual even carries Apple’s coveted Apple Developer Connection logo.